First Run News

Former Mass.

Two months after the deadliest shooting in modern U.S. history, the House on Wednesday passed legislation that would allow people to use permits for carrying concealed handguns across state lines while also boosting the background check system. Despite bipartisan support for enhancing background checks for gun purchases, the bill passed along party lines, 231-198, due to Democratic opposition to the concealed-carry reciprocity measure. The gun policy measures were originally two separate bills.

GOP lawmakers say they have heard new stories about political bias or interference within the FBI on the eve of new testimony Thursday by FBI Director Christopher Wray. Rep.

An unexpectedly high number of Democrats voted in favor of an effort to launch impeachment proceedings against President Trump on Wednesday, revealing the growing agitation among liberals to remove him from office. The House voted overwhelmingly 364-58 to table a resolution from Rep. MORE (D-Texas) laying out articles of impeachment against Trump, with four Democrats voting “present.” All Republicans voted with 126 Democrats to defeat the resolution.

Sen. MORE (D-Minn.) is expected to resign from office Thursday, one day after his Democratic colleagues turned decisively against him over allegations of groping and other sexual misconduct. In a dizzying turn of events, more than 30 Democratic senators called for Franken to step down after a new woman came forward to allege that he had forcibly tried to kiss her. Sen.

President Trump on Wednesday ripped into Democratic congressional leaders one day before a critical White House meeting, claiming the party is looking to shut down the government with its demands on immigration.  “It could happen,” Trump told reporters at the White House when asked about the chances of a shutdown. “The Democrats are really looking at something that is very dangerous to our country. They are looking at shutting down.” Trump took aim at threats from some Democrats to vote against a year-end spending deal unless Congress shields from deportation young immigrants in the U.S.

Over a period of months, several reporters with The New York Times have broken open stories about the producer Harvey Weinstein and the former Fox host Bill O’Reilly. The stories have documented yearslong patterns of sexual abuse, detailed the institutional systems honed to silence victims, and sparked a national reckoning over sexual abuse in the workplace. These reporters are not done.

SYDNEY, Australia — Australia’s Parliament voted overwhelmingly to legalize same-sex marriage on Thursday, overcoming years of conservative resistance to enact change that the public had made clear that it wanted. The final approval in the House of Representatives, with just four votes against the bill, came three weeks after a national referendum showed strong

Women who rely on birth control pills or contraceptive devices that release hormones face a small but significant increase in the risk for breast cancer, according to a large study published on Wednesday. The study, which followed 1.8 million Danish women for more than a decade, upends widely held assumptions about modern contraceptives for younger generations of women.

WASHINGTON — Michael T. Flynn, President Trump’s former national security adviser, told a former business associate that economic sanctions against Russia would be “ripped up” as one of the Trump administration’s first acts, according to an account by a whistle-blower made public on Wednesday. Mr. Flynn believed that ending the sanctions could allow a business project he had once participated in to move forward, according to the whistle-blower. The account is the strongest evidence to date that the Trump administration wanted to end the sanctions immediately, and suggests that Mr.